On February 5, the Department of English honoured award recipients at the annual English Awards Reception. The program offers a number of awards each year, including prizes and scholarships that recognize the achievements of students in English and Creative Writing. Several awards were established to honour former faculty members, one honours the Department’s retired faculty, and one was established by a former Chancellor of York University. In addition, prizes are given for the best essays written in courses at each year level and to the winner of the TA Award for Excellence in Teaching. Most prizes are supported by generous donations from former faculty, alumni, and affiliated community members.
Held in a bright, balloon-festooned room in Atkinson College, the event began with opening remarks by the Chair of English, Professor Andy Weaver, and Associate Dean of Teaching & Learning, Professor Michele Johnson. Both Professor Weaver and AD Johnson extended warm congratulations to the award winners. The Undergraduate Program Director of English, Professor Stephen Cain, presided over the ceremony. Faculty members who had nominated students for prizes presented the awards and spoke in glowing terms of their students’ work. Many of the award recipients took to the podium to express eloquent thanks to their professors, families, and friends. Following the formal ceremony, the winners and their guests, faculty, and staff mingled over sandwiches, treats, and beverages.
“It is such a delight to celebrate our wonderful students,” said Natalie Neill, a Teaching Stream Professor in English who chairs the Department’s Teaching Committee. “We are so proud of their accomplishments.”
Congratulations to all the winners and honourable mentions! Thanks to organizers Rose Crawford and Michelle Hong without whom this special day would not have been possible.
The winning essays are preserved in York University’s open-access repository, YorkSpace. They can be found in the English Undergraduate Essay Prizes Collection.
The following is the list of winners:
Best 1000-Level Essay Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Chance Garratt-Dahan for “Story-Telling and the Preservation of Law & Justice”
Best 2000-Level Essay Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Charlie Lee for “The Construct of Freedom: Comparing Baldwin and Jacobs”
Honourable Mention: Sydney Nattoo for “The Tendrils and The Spaces Between: Metafiction in Cat’s Cradle”
Best 3000-Level Essay Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Emily Schuster-Woldan for “Reading a Film: Character Interiority in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) and its Film Adaptation (1993)”
Best 4000-level Essay Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Trevor Froates for “The Swan’s Nest: Shakespeare and the birds of Cymbeline”
Honourable Mention: Lubna Salamafor “On Culinary Poisoning as One of the Fine Arts: Female Poisoners Edition”
Avie Bennett Prize in Canadian Literature 2022-2023
Winner: Rosina Nicolazzo for “Julius Caesar and The Death of a Chief: The Deconstruction of Colonial Knowledge and Reclamation of Indigeneity Through Theatre”
Brian Hepworth Memorial Scholarship 2022-2023
Winner: Amor Lomibao for “Racialized Liminality as Suffering in William Blake’s ‘The Little Black Boy’ and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone”
Honourable Mention: Joseph Sereneyfor “Tyranny and the Power of the Female Voice in Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The Winter’s Tale”
Department of English Retirees’ Scholarship 2022-2023
Co-Winner: Suzanne Gregory
Co-Winner: Javeria Rana
Elizabeth Sabiston Prize 2022-2023
Co-Winner: Katura Gibb for “A Becoming Silence”
Co-Winner: Robert MacIsaac for “Burning the Rule Book: Portrayals of Love in The Lais of Marie de France”
H.K. Girling Literature Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Cody Poisson for “A Great Deal Too Light”
June McMaster-Harrison Memorial Scholarship 2022-2023
Winner: Emma Verrilli for “Authenticity as Personal Legacy: Explorating my Family’s Italian-Canadian Immigrant Experience through Community Cookbook Writing”
Honourable Mention: LubnaSalamafor “On Culinary Poisoning as One of the Fine Arts: Female Poisoners Edition”
Lucille Herbert Memorial Scholarship 2022-2023
Winner: Cody Poisson
Matthew Ahern Memorial Prize 2022-2023
Winner: Jean-Louis Voyer
Stephanie Stavro Scholarship in English 2022-2023
Winner: John Batista
Teaching Assistants’ Award for Excellence 2022-2023
Winner: Madelaine McLaughlin